Committee advances $4.4M amendment to expand tenant-right-to-counsel funding

The Budget & Finance Committee forwarded an amendment on Dec. 13 that would increase the mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) grant to the Eviction Defense Collaborative (EDC) by up to $4,400,000, bringing the EDC’s aggregate funding for the relevant grants to approximately $11,391,504 and increasing funded client capacity from 892 to about 1,450.

Hugo Ramirez, manager for eviction prevention and housing stabilization at MOHCD, described the tenant-right-to-counsel program as a citywide, Prop F–originated initiative that provides universal access to city-funded legal representation for tenants facing eviction. MOHCD said the overall program serves about 2,200 households annually and that roughly 80% of clients who use the service receive full-scope legal representation.

Orapro/Ora Prokovnik, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative, said the EDC and its subcontractors have served hundreds of tenants this fiscal year and that data systems (Justice Server/Salesforce) and weekly MOHCD coordination support program monitoring. Prokovnik said that, halfway through the current fiscal year, the program had served more than 925 tenants and that only one client who received full-scope representation had been evicted to date.

The Budget & Legislative Analyst supported approval but raised two monitoring concerns: an apparent $400,000 overbudgeting in rental and utility costs that MOHCD said it will correct, and the lack of an aggregated, grant-level performance rollup that would allow easy assessment of year-to-year outcomes. BLA recommended MOHCD adopt clearer aggregated performance measures or a scoring rubric so the board can evaluate contractor performance without manual aggregation of disaggregated dashboard metrics.

The committee voted to forward the amendment to the full Board with a positive recommendation. MOHCD said it will continue to produce consolidated views in its Power BI dashboards and conduct program-level assessments in spring 2024 as part of its grant-monitoring practice.

What comes next: The amendment will go to the full Board for approval and MOHCD has said it will finalize budget corrections and provide more accessible aggregated performance reporting as requested by the BLA.